Jeanette Markus and Doug DeOrchis recall their first meeting warmly; now, they’re a couple. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Anne Rodgers
When Doug DeOrchis moved to Florida from Rhode Island four years ago, one of the first calls he made was to a girl named Jeannette whom he’d been sweet on almost three decades ago in college.
Little did he know that the separate paths they’d traveled were about to converge in a way that would lead to wedding vows on Dec. 1.
They met in Washington, D.C., on the Georgetown University bus: Doug, a self-described medical school geek, had no hope that the beautiful blond girl in the fourth row would even talk to him.
But she did.
She even shared her phone number when Doug said he was looking for someone to take to med school dances.
“I can’t have a girlfriend,” Doug told her, conscious of both his lack of money and a commitment to his studies.
But Jeannette, a finance student on full academic scholarship at American University with two part-time jobs, was stretched thin as well. Besides, she had a boyfriend back home in Delray Beach.
“As long as you don’t need a girlfriend, we’ll be good,” she answered.
When he called a month later and identified himself as “Doug from the bus,” he wondered whether she’d remember him.
Jeannette didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, it must be time to dance,” she said. “What time should I be ready, and what would you like me to wear?”
Doug recalls their first evening together with pride.
“I probably showed up in a blue seersucker suit, but she had on this knockout black outfit she’d made herself. It was more than nice-fitting. All my friends were whispering ‘Where did you meet this girl?’ ”
Jeannette, now 53, has fond memories of the night as well.
“What I remember was Doug dancing me around and around, and all I could do was look at him and see his wonderful smile. He was the only one I saw at those dances.”
Though they became quite fond of each other, college just wasn’t their time or place.
“Family expectations were very daunting back then,” explains Doug, now 56. “My family was not wild about any idea except me going back home to New England after college. We were following the paths of education our families had laid out for us long before.”
Yes, there was a moonlight kiss, one night in his parents’ back yard overlooking the Long Island Sound.
But soon Jeannette Pastore went home to Florida and married her boyfriend, while Doug embarked on a medical career that took him to Hartford, Conn., and then Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he founded Miriam Hospital’s stroke center. He married and had three children, while Jeannette had one daughter.
In 2008, shortly after a divorce, Doug joined the Boca Radiology Group and became director of the Stroke Center at Boca Raton Regional Hospital.
While staying at the Marriott in Delray Beach during the time he was searching for a place to live, Doug opened his laptop to Google Jeannette, having no idea whether she even still lived in Florida.
“The last I knew, she was married and had small baby girl. I was so jealous of her fiancé back then that I remembered his name all that time later. His name — Markus — popped into my head; I used it and sure enough, Jeannette’s picture with Morgan Stanley pops up.
“When Doug called me up,” Jeannette fills in, “I had been divorced for seven years. I had dated sporadically, but I said to myself, ‘I am prepared to be alone for the rest of my life unless I meet someone very special and it’s spectacular. Otherwise I will not settle.’ ”
She recognized Doug’s voice right away. They determined that it had been 28 years to the month since their last contact, and then — amazingly — they discovered that they were only 12 blocks apart.
They agreed to meet for dinner on Atlantic Avenue, and when she spotted Doug through the evening throng, it was a magical moment.
“We hugged, and he lifted me up and spun me around in the air like a helicopter,” Jeannette gushes. “He gave me a big kiss and said, ‘You are still the woman of my dreams.’ Internally, I swooned. It was so wonderful.”
Their belated romance unfurled slowly and naturally; over the next three years they talked of marriage, but Doug didn’t officially propose until he was a patient awaiting heart surgery last Dec. 21.
Suddenly, he wanted things permanent.
Just one day earlier, he had been writing Christmas cards when he experienced chest pain.
Though he’d exercised, eaten sensibly and had no family history of heart problems, Doug’s expertise told him to play it safe and head for the hospital. Within a day, he had proof of 85 percent blockage on the left coronary artery and 65 percent on the right.
“I knew it couldn’t be stented,” he says. “I told my doctor, ‘I need open-heart surgery, like, right now.’ ”
His doctor agreed.
So when Jeannette and Doug were alone together just before surgery, Doug asked his sweetheart to marry him … if he made it through.
And this time, all the couple’s romantic dreams came true. Their wedding ceremony for 130 guests is planned for Dec. 1 at the Sundy House.
“I don’t take anything for granted,” Doug vows today, the picture of restored health. “We feel we’ve been given a second chance, almost a third chance.”
Jeannette agrees: “We attribute this amazing reunion to God. It’s all just too coincidental and extraordinary; we think it can only be God’s
plan.”
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